British shoppers overspend £1,000 at supermarkets

According to a newly released market report, customers are being seduced by Supermarkets with special offers and multi-buy deals to spend more than they plan, resulting in burning away £1,000 a year on average than interned. The findings released by Money Advice Service (MAS) pointed out that around 76 percent of the shoppers fall into the honey trap of special grocery deals such as “buy one get one free” or “bogof” offers.

The market report says that on each visit to the supermarket a person would be spending £11.14 more than planned. It is estimated that shoppers visits supermarkets on an average regularity of 2.2 times a week. According to MAS what this means is that an average shopper annually overspends £1,274 on supermarket shoppings alone. Most importantly, MAS findings says that the shoppers who has a shopping rundown prepared and sticking to the list, annually spend £200 less than those who never did so.

Money Advice Service conducted the survey with 2000 shoppers and asked them to select the cheapest option while presenting them with four sets of deals found in supermarket. Only 2 percent of the participants were able to select the best value offer. While 74 percent answered a minimum of one question correctly. John Penberthy-Smith, customer director for the MAS, said: “The problem is that quite often we see a special offer at the supermarket and we don’t want to miss out – so we throw it into our trolley without really thinking about whether it is a good deal or whether we actually need it.